Suffering and Desperation Make Your “aJesusStory”

By Scott Box

“aJesusStory” comprises the regular episodes of life resulting from living as a gritty, heroic worshiper of Jesus. I knew it was my responsibility to invite people into my journey to tell and show them that Jesus had control of my crises and was ordering the chaos in and around me. As my desperation did for me, your desperation to know and depend on Jesus becomes your secret weapon, too. Here’s a quick explanation in under 1000 words. Wink.

Desperation gave me two directions I could choose between in my “aJesusStory:”
I could move into isolation and dark hopelessness,
Or I could choose to move toward a hopeful dependence on Jesus.

There is no other way to explain it; my gritty struggle and suffering as a result of Bipolar disorder and unrelenting low back pain broke my understanding of Jesus and Christian worship. In other words, my lack of mental health and back pain helped me look to Jesus in desperation and long for His rescue even in the most minor aspects of my everyday life: my words, actions, relationships and situations. I had previously thought such humbling dependence on Jesus to be unquestionably unnecessary—if I had maintained this thinking, hopelessness would have been a legitimate destination.

Suffering caused me to reach this breakpoint. That is when I learned that my desperation to know Jesus became the secret ingredient in my story of faith, my \”aJesusStory.” My desperation for Jesus resulted in a dependence on Jesus that rebuilt my broken understanding of Christian worship and witness. My secret:

If I am not desperate for Jesus, I do not need Jesus.
Ironic? Maybe. Stupid? No. The times I thought I did not need Jesus to save the day every day, I was wrong—I got hurt, and so did others—in small and big ways. So I embrace desperation for Jesus in my daily living—my “aJesusStory” today. I would be lying to myself to say, “I do not need Jesus.” I do. I need Him to remind me why I get out of bed every morning and why I encourage and respect people the way I do. Desperate dependence on Jesus—my lifestyle of worship—affects my “aJesusStory,” my witness for Jesus.

I chose to begin to live my worship of Jesus with intentional, desperate dependence on Jesus because I needed Him to “come through” for me permanently. The answer to my desperation was to grab and hold onto Jesus for dear life; I was longing for Him to fulfill His promise of new life and endless adventure despite my pain and crises. Jesus had awakened in me a desire for Him to tell a better story with my life than I was telling on my own. So, I began reaching out urgently to have Jesus be my hero regularly.
Heck, outside of Jesus, I still have no answers for my crisis of perpetual mental and physical pain and chaos. I could not, and cannot, rescue myself or order the chaos around me. It all came/comes at me too fast. I needed Jesus to rescue me in every way that mattered. I still do.

This analogy might seem like it is coming out of left field, but consider it: In the same way as a telescope like the Hubble or James Webb looks into the stars and reveals the world beyond Earth, when I started to look beyond myself to Jesus to save me, all of a sudden, I became a part of a story so much bigger than me—His “aJesusStory.” I realized my pain and crises were invaluable to my worship of Jesus Christ—my “aJesusStory”—I was desperate for Jesus to rescue me.

My suffering and desperation were the sparks that caused me to begin to depend on and trust that Jesus understood my pain in the same way He depended on and trusted in God, His Father, with His pain and suffering to tell the most extraordinary heroic story ever with His life—Jesus’ story—the first “aJesusStory.” My sufferings caused me agony, but they were the very things that guided me, in my state of desperate brokenness, back to Jesus. So, because of Bipolar disorder and chronic back pain, I chose to grab onto Jesus to live and tell a gritty but heroic story for others—my “aJesusStory.”
“Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”—Romans 5:3-5

When you and I release control and become desperately dependent on Jesus to save the day in our words, actions, relationships and situations, our hope, expectation, rest, and obedience as the icon of Christ can increase because of our suffering. We eliminate hopelessness as a destination and begin to live a gritty “aJesusStory” that tells a heroic “aJesusStory” about Jesus. I know that reads a little clunky, but proper understanding and application of our sufferings shape our work as witnesses for Jesus. Then, our gritty lifestyles of worship can tell heroic stories about Jesus, inviting others who share in our sufferings to choose Jesus instead of hopelessness.
Your “aJesusStory” is the tool that can awaken a longing for Jesus in people who are being threatened by hopelessness—as you once were—and who do not know the purpose of suffering and desperation—but you do.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”—2 Corinthians 1:3-4

Scott and Kariann Box live in Redmond, Oregon. Scott serves as Pastor of Development at Shiloh Ranch Church and has been a worship leader for over twenty-five years. Kariann works as a Realtor in Central Oregon and supports Scott’s…creative spirit. They have two children, a one-hundred-pound Labradoodle and a four-pound Shih Tzu without teeth. Scott is the author of HEROIC DISGRACE: Order out of chaos. Hope out of fear. ― A Worship Hero Story